


Dearer Than

by HeartOfTheMirror



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Being Lost, Betrayal, Brain Damage, Brainwashing, Dark Phil Coulson, Dubious Morality, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Family, Family Feels, Family Secrets, Father-Daughter Relationship, Heterosexual Sex, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Mildly Dubious Consent, Natasha finding and refinding herself, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Other, SHIELD, Survival, Survivor Guilt, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 18:44:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8726011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeartOfTheMirror/pseuds/HeartOfTheMirror
Summary: It's hard to find something when you don't know you've lost it.Natasha has lost many things, some of them more tender than others.





	1. Dearer Than One

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the beautiful Queenie!

Natasha wakes up. The world is gray. The snow has no color. No scent. It falls like shredded paper. Buries her gently. The sky is hanging on the cusp of sunrise– or sunset. 

Natasha pushes herself up. The crunch of the wet snow startles her. She is like an animal, afraid of the sounds she herself makes.

The blanket of snow is packed tight.

Uncompromising.

She takes stock: one arctic quality parka- gray, one pair arctic quality snow pants- black, one pair waterproof insulated boots- black, one pair fur lined waterproof mittens-black, one knife- half serrated folding 4 inch blade Russian make, one flare gun- loaded. 

Scanning the horizon for landmarks gives her few clues, but something about the shape of the mountains in the distance makes her think _Alaska_ and _Mission Status: Abort. Cover compromised._ She searches herself again, sure there will be a hidden homing beacon somewhere she can activate to call for extraction, but comes up short. She doesn’t know what protocol is for this sort of mission. Doesn’t even know what her mission was. 

Such are the hazards of working for the Red Room.

It takes her two days to hike back to anchorage. Even with her enhancements she almost dies. Instead of dying, Natasha stumbles into town and kills a man as he pisses against the back wall of a building. 

* * *

She steals: three hundred USD- cash, one shotgun- 12 gauge, one set of keys- Chevrolet. The keys are for a kelly green truck parked on the street. She smells stale beer, knows he won’t be missed, and lays the man down so that the broken angle of his neck will not be obvious.

She drives the truck to the nearest junkyard, watching the six loose shells bouncing over the passenger seat out of the corner of her eye. She breaks in, climbing the frigid fence as quickly and elegantly as a flight of stairs. She leaves the dead man’s license plates on a half dead yellow VW Beetle, puts those plates on her truck and swiftly calculates how far this temporary fix can get her.

She drives under the speed limit all the way to the next town, letting her muscles but not her mind relax into the luxury of the rattling heater. She spends five minutes coaxing the radio dial until she gets a strong signal. She plays the country music station just loud enough for others to hear as they drive by, despite the tightly closed windows. She doesn’t mind most kinds of music. One song in ten is bearable.

There is no need to stop for hours before her bladder demands relief. There is no one on this road but she doesn’t let that lull her even as she squats bare-assed above the snow, giving it color. She remembers the man who thought there was no one behind the pub, so she keeps all her senses honed, scanning like the staticky radio in the truck. There is no signal.

When she gets back in the truck she doesn’t leave immediately. Something makes her open the glove compartment. She takes stock: one half-eaten sandwich- turkey, tomato, lettuce, mayo, one open pack of travel tissues, two condoms- sealed, a crumpled letter- foreclosure. In the passenger foot well she finds an open bag of homemade jerky and a nearly empty bottle of water. 

The few drops she can suck out feel like heaven on her swollen tongue so she gets out again, finds clean snow, fills it. Tucks it down the front of her parka thinks, “ _This is how the Eskimos do it. Like Nanook's wife._ ”. 

* * *

A man in polar bear pants grinning at a camera. She remembers the tick of the film real, a voice saying it saw this film when it was new, the hand of a man on her shoulder and nothing else.

* * *

* * *

Natasha leaves the truck in a junk lot, takes the plates, worries about repeating old tricks but reminds herself that her options are limited in this environment. Clears the car of personal belongings, which is when the picture of two children in ugly Christmas dresses and one in an ugly Christmas tie flutters down from the driver’s side visor.

She tucks it in her pocket automatically, takes what’s useful, then destroys the rest and hides the remains and the plates. Before she leaves she takes an armload of spray paint from where it’s stashed in a lean-to without a lock and makes the truck unrecognizable.

Imperfect, especially considering the fact that her cover has, apparently, been compromised and that means someone is looking. It also means that maybe no one is coming, because she can’t remember a rendezvous point.

She dismisses the thought. She is a valuable asset. They always take her back home. Department X would never willingly part with its Black Widow. 

* * *

( _”Leave,” he whispered, choking on tears, sweating, broken. “Next time you get the chance, run.” And she brushed the tears away with childish fingers so he wouldn’t choke anymore. She loved him, couldn’t wait until she was big enough to protect him. “Not without you,” she said, looking up at him, solid and sure. He laughed. That was… very good to hear and strange. He didn’t laugh often. She was proud..._ )

* * *

She uses the dead man’s money to buy a night in a mustard colored motel room with a tv that works most of the time. In the morning she would sneak across the border, but she is exhausted, running on fumes.

Sitting cross-legged on the musty mattress with a pile of vending machine gold spread around her, Natasha watches grainy news footage of a government installation going up in smoke. The anchors call it an accident- natural gas leaked for weeks.

Natasha lets herself smile because she can not be seen. She is proud of her work. She is a valuable asset and valuable assets were never left out in the cold. She bites down on a chocolate bell, savors the sugary cream as it fills her mouth. She is never allowed these kinds of luxuries back home unless she performs well on a mission. There is proof that she has performed well on a mission now so she deserves this, even if she can’t remember the rendezvous point.

She doesn’t think about why she woke up days away from the target. Doesn’t think about what they would do to him if they thought she was running. She doesn’t remember who the man is but she remembers his voice and warmth and that she loves him. For now, it’s enough.

He will forgive her, he’s never angry. He smiles with his blue eyes, which don’t match her own, although she wants them to, and he pets her hair, and he tells her that if he got to raise her instead of the Party then he would give her little cakes every day. Even if it meant working at the garage until dusk and the docks until dawn.

_”What docks? What garage?” she asks. “When did you do that? Was it for a mission?” His eyes get that fogy far off look that she hates, selfishly, because it means she does not exist to him in this moment. He is not here._

“Yes,” he says slowly. “A mission.”

“Papa?” she asks, afraid and torn by the fact. Nothing scared her like this did. What if he never came back? He always came back from missions but some days she was a stranger to him. Once he smacked her across the room on command, just because she wouldn’t go back in the cryo chamber until he said goodnight to her and the scientists hadn’t like that. There had been no recognition in his eyes then. He wept when he remembered it later. Wept when the made him forget it again.

Curled up on top of her blanket, she sleeps. She will have to cross the border tomorrow.

* * *

It’s when she’s sleeping that she remembers she no longer works for the red room. 

* * *

_Arrows gleaming on the rooftop, the smell of coffee, a sarcastic snort. This man, too, she loves._

* * *

But if not the Red Room, then who? She remembers no other home. Just the man with ice in his hair and the man with arrows on the roof.  
One is the property of the Red Room but other… the other is not.

It occurs to her that she is running, that she must have run long ago.

Conclusion: the first man she ever loved is dead. She betrayed her father and her country and so lost both. She must find the man with the arrows and kill him for tricking her into this.

She wants to weep bitterly for her father but she pushes tears away. Revenge first, always. She has to be strong lest she disgraces him any more than she has already.

* * *

Natasha wakes, ripping the lamp from the nightstand and hurling it against the opposite wall. It’s only after she does this that she realizes she is not alone in the room.  
Her knife is in her hand, her heart is pounding like a metal fist against a wooden door.

“Princess,” he says solemnly, as if addressing her by her rank. She breathes, does not lower the knife. She once made a point of killing every other man who has ever called her that, so the word could be his privilege alone. He had so few of them but she could give him this.

“Papa,” she says, her voice wobbling. She’d meant to call him father, cold and calculating. But everything in her head is swimming, confused. “Where are we?” She asks him.

“One hundred miles from the Canadian border,” he says and there is a gentleness in his voice that has been missing for the last dozen or so missions.

“What year is it?” She asks, maintaining steady hands by force of will alone. “1990? 1994?”

“2014,” he tells her. Only he could hear that question and answer so simply; small talk, for them. She takes a deep breath. Nods. Wonders if he can see her. His eyes have always been better than hers- a sniper.

“Where is the extraction point?”

“That depends on who you want to pick you up,” he tells her with a sad, sardonic twist of his lips. They look the same age now, almost. Maybe they are, subjectively. She’ll always feel like a little girl next to him. She feels sweat prickle at her brow–-she has faced worse than this, she knows she has. Her feet have danced across literal minefields unscathed. One impossible question should mean nothing to an assassin. He taught her that.

“I want to go with you,” she says, folding her weapon but not setting it aside. He taught her that too- being unarmed was not a show of trust, it was a surrender. “And the man,” she said haltingly, not sure if she was overstepping. “The man with arrows. I want to go with him too.”

“He’s your partner,” her Papa said, standing and offering her a hand, palm up. She accepted it and stood gracefully. “He’s waiting back at base.”

“I think I’m mad at him,” she tells her father off hand, gathering her things. Or rather, the things she has made hers. The scraps she has collected because there was no one who could stop her.

“Probably,” he snorts.


	2. Dearer Than Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The closer she gets the farther away she feels. Each new thing she discovers is something new to lose. Worse, it's something that she has already lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd and with many thanks to the Sisterhood of the Dropping Pants and SuperheroResin in particular for all their help and kind words

Her father calls it in. She lets him. If he trusts these people they work for enough to let them take her in from the cold then she will follow his lead.

He’d always wanted them to be American, she remembered. It was good, then, that their home base seemed to be in the States. She only ever wanted him to be happy. 

Two impossible goals and somehow both of them had been achieved, judging by the smile on his face as he speaks to Steve (his handler? Partner? They’d never had partners before. The Red Room hadn’t encouraged that kind of trust. Their theory was that if the operatives trusted no one, loved no one but the State, then they would be perfectly loyal.)

Her father hustles her to a wide strip of snowy field in a truck he stole. This one also has a bag of homemade jerky. This amuses Natasha enough that she picks up the bag and selects a piece, offering it to him with a snarky little smile. 

Her father clamps it between his teeth without taking either of his hands off the wheel and she scrunches her nose at him, more for form’s sake than anything.

“You’re gross,” she says before she remembers they shouldn’t be speaking Russian. It’s strange suddenly, knowing that she has an adult body when she feels like she should be an adolescent. She knew better than to act childish when she was a child so why, now, is she suddenly reduced to this state?

Not fair. 

“You’ll be home soon, honey,” Her father tells her, petting her hair with one hand like she really was a child. Like any unenlightened observer wouldn’t think they were the same age.

She turned her head away and crossed her arms. It was too much for her to process. Her father left her in peace, fiddling with the radio occasionally but not demanding anything of her.

* * *

In the snowy field there is a small helijet waiting. She shouldn’t recognize the thing for what it is- technology of that sort hadn’t existed in the ‘90s. But there is no moment of confusion or awe. She even recognizes the arc reactor tech that powers it and begins casing it for weaknesses before she can stop herself.

She hates these jarring little reminders that she lost twenty years somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness. She once heard spies described as terrorists of information. They slip through the crowd unnoticed and then BAM. Everything blown to shit. Their weapon is intelligence and she’s lost any intel that might possibly still be relevant. 

If espionage were economics she’d be a pauper who’d been born a Rockafeller. She’d be the little, lost princess all the Americans loved, brought back into the loving arms of her family at long last and made wealthy again.

If her father ever chooses to debrief her.

He lets her choose any of the ten available seats on the aircraft. Naturally, she chooses the co-pilot position. Even with her truncated memories, Natasha can’t recall ever having been a simple passenger in any part of her life.

* * *

The flight is short and boring but she pays careful attention to everything, including the fact that they remain cloaked as they cross the border and fail to announce their arrival in foreign airspace to anyone.

When they land in Seattle her father tells her to stay put, he has to check on something but he’ll be right back.

As soon as she’s given him the slip she wanders into a coffee shop. The smell of the roast is disconcertingly familiar, as is the strange green logo. The name amuses her. Starbucks- it sounds like something that someone would call her father. 

The man with the goatee. Smartass.

She digs in the thought, it’s as painful as a bullet extraction in the field and about as effective. What she pulls out is: an asset she was sent to handle.

 _It should be simple, he likes redheads, and you’re the best we’ve got Widow._ It was simple. Stark didn’t like redheads, he was in love with one. And even an infamous cold war spy couldn’t do much in the face of true love. 

Natasha was secretly relieved. Seducing Stark into bed to gain his compliance would have been tiresome and irritating. He never shut up and he had extremely high standards. The sex would have gone on for hours and even that might not have put a stop to Stark’s runaway brain.

And she didn’t have to lie to her archer, who would know anyway and say nothing.

That was a fight she knows they only had once- even if she can’t remember it.

* * *

She gets a cup of something hot and sweet and vaguely almond flavored from the specials board.

She takes her first scalding sip and immediately begins to feel alive again. The drink makes it a little easier to wander through the city, smiling and playing tourist. Without meaning to she finds herself walking down a side street, up a set of stairs, digging a key out of a plant and letting herself into the apartment above a locally owned fair trade cafe that apparently specializes in French pastry.

The apartment is sleek yet comfortable, bare and unlived in but beautiful and very much to her taste. It’s so rare to find something that mixes luxury and subtlety in the way Natasha likes. The place has so many empty spaces, so many questions hidden in the dust on the shelves and the framed photos that somehow fail to show any faces. 

It could be a home, it could hold a whole life. 

She opens the laptop on the coffee table and punches in her username and password before it occurs to her to wonder what they are. She doesn’t have to look, just pulls up her file.

* * *

Her name is Natalia Alianova Romanova. Codename: Black Widow. Mother: The Red Room. Father: Codename Winter Soldier. She is subject WS 2.4. They made five subjects for the original testing. Method: mate the Winter Soldier with Black Widow agents until a satisfactory number of offspring are produced. 

A note in red pen, documenting the asset’s resistance. A mocking tone as his tears are documented– _He made no sound during torture but pussy makes him weep? No longer a man._

Of the five subjects three survived the initial round of testing. One survived to the age of five, subject WS 2.4.

WS 1 had to be wiped repeatedly after each subject failed to withstand testing. The loss of his offspring made him unstable. Untrainable. Untamable is his animalistic grief.

WS 1 could no longer complete coitus. Refused to disrobe. Attempts to drug WS 1 into compliance were thwarted when WS 1’s body burned through the drugs too quickly. 

Care was to be taken with the remaining subject. Creating more subjects had a negative cost-benefit analysis. At least until they could find a cocktail that could keep the soldier both hard and compliant.

Eventually, the project was set aside for consideration at a later time and Natasha was officially an only child. An item of interest and value.

Natasha closes the file. The coffee has twisted up her stomach into gordian knots. She closes her eyes and attempts to dispel the mental images the information had invited in where they were unwanted. She is a Black Widow, a child of the Red Room. The minor humiliations in the file mean nothing, especially when they hadn’t even happened to her. Especially when they aren’t even happening anymore.

She stands and moves away from the computer, letting her fingers trail lightly over the picture frames, tickling their fur of dust. Like a medium attempting to call a spirit from beyond the veil she hovers her hand over each in turn. She searches her savaged, looted memory for something good. Just one little good thing to pull up from the rubble, one scuffed up diamond to pluck from the dull rough stone that buried her.

Then, a spark catches dry tinder and there he is. Her fingers close on a deep eggplant colored frame that shows nothing but a man’s muscular arms and chest as he makes an absurd pose from Dragon Ball Z. His muscular thighs are visible at the bottom of the frame, pale blond hairs catching in the sun where his basketball shorts rode up. His thick, bandaged arm is covering his face but she knows exactly who he is.

A memory drifts back as she stares at every careless, beautiful line of him, though it isn’t from that day in the park where he had started goofing off before the camera.

* * *

“Come on, circus freak,” Natasha said playfully, almost adoringly. She wound his tie around her finger and tugged him forward so that their bodies collided and his hands flew to her hips to steady himself. His eyes were on hers, captured. His mouth though was making this ridiculous smile, like she was cooing over him instead of insulting him and yanking him around, a cat’s little toy mouse batted with impunity. 

Even in the ill-fitting suit, he was beautiful. The scar on his jaw, the stubble that made him look like so much rough trade, the way his biceps were trying to bulge right out of the rent-a-tux. 

He was an idiot, and she was doubly so for having fallen in love with him.

* * *

She strayed into the bedroom. The queen size bed rested in the optimal location for clear sight lines to all methods of egress and ingress. There were weapons hidden within reach of the right side of the bed. Just under the left side of the bed was a silky little band aide backing.

How telling one little slip could be.

She hurt in some deep part of her she couldn’t name. She longed, deeply, with a sadness that made her overflow, pouring forth out of her body into a vast unnavigable ocean of despair. 

She wanted to be _warm_ , to be touched, like a real live human woman and not a mythical being on a pedestal. The eternally cool, unshakable Black Widow. She who had no feelings and could afford none. She as that woman, when she had to be. And somehow, she was this too. 

She ran her hand over the soft cotton sheets on the bed. They were cool to the touch and perfectly flat as though they had been ironed in place.

When was the last time she had rolled in these sheets with her archer? The last time she’d slept, tucked into him with one hand on the Beretta under the pillow to protect him in case any of their ghosts came calling.

She remembered the first time she’d tried to fuck Clint, suddenly, unbidden.

It had been a few weeks after she’d joined Shield, when she was still a junior enough agent to have Clint be her handler. She’d shown up at his shitty motel room door in Iowa in nothing but a pair of hot pants and a crop top that tied closed in the front. A very fake little cop badge was pinned over her left breast and a pair of cheap handcuffs dangled from her index finger.

“I’ve been a very bad girl, Mr. Barton,” Natasha said coyly, leaning against the door frame in a way that was designed to show off the ample curves of her body.

He blinked at her sleepily, already having changed into baggy pajama pants and an oversized Folgers t-shirt. His hair was a mess. It was only 9 o’lock after a puffball mission about government corruption. Surely, she thought, she hadn’t actually woken him up?

 

“Um, sure,” Clint said eventually, shuffling back and opening the door wider to let her into the room. “Just have a seat at the table.” He gestured vaguely toward the wobbly round little wooden table in the “dinette” portion of the motel room.

Natasha suddenly felt that she had no more idea what was going on here than Clint did. She’d never had a seduction go quite this sideways before. And this one had been planned as meticulously as all the others- she never got sloppy just because she was doing something for pleasure rather than business.

 

She’s wanted to bite right into him from the first moment she ever saw him. It wasn’t his peak physical conditioning- it took more than that to impress her, frankly- or the easy sense of humor he never lost. It wasn’t even the fact that he’d chosen to save her life when he’d been sent to kill her. Or the fact that actually _could_ have killed her if he’d had a mind to.

 

She couldn’t explain what drew her to him that first time except that she wanted to shove a knife between the ribs of every person who had ever touched him before. She wanted to hold him close and sip little kisses from him until she finally understood what made him so different from all the others.

* * *

‘That’s how the Barnes Clan love, alright,” She remembers her father having said. His fingers were twined with another man’s in her memory though she is sure the two of them were alone, drinking and playing poker when he said this.

* * *

Natasha had chosen the little cop outfit very carefully after having judiciously hacked his internet history to try to figure out the best way to control the encounter.

She surreptitiously glanced at herself in the dirty floor length mirror on the back of the door. She was gorgeous. A fucking knockout, as her father liked to say wistfully when describing his past girlfriends. There was no way Clint was about to turn her down.

Some guys needed a little more of a warm up than others, though. She could work with that.

Natasha slowly lowered herself into one of the miss-matched chairs, cocking one bent leg out to the side provocatively and letting the other rest straight in front of her.

“So, listen,” Clint was saying, pacing and messing his fingers through his already insane hair. “I have this- well it’s not exactly, but hey look.” He stopped and looked at her and it occurred to Natasha for the first time that maybe he was talking to himself.

 _God_ , Natasha remembered thinking at the time, _what am I even doing here?_ She could have had anyone. She didn’t want to leave, she wanted to yank Clint’s hands away and mess up his hair herself. She wanted to bite over those thick, sculpted shoulders. She wanted to be the one who kindled the light in those kind brown eyes, that looked at her with more love and sympathy than any puppy Natasha had ever found.

“Do you know how to play Parcheesi?” Clint asked.

“Yes,” Natasha said automatically, privately wondering if there was some kind of “strip-Parcheesi” kink that she hadn’t heard about. Even she had her limits.

“Oh great,” Clint said in a rush, digging around in the bedside drawer and pulling out a pack of cards with a hole punched all the way through the center- casino cast-offs for sure. “Because I kind of got conned into, well I lost a bet, but I meant it as a joke when I said- anyway. I have to watch my neighbor’s elder mother for a couple days next week and apparently all she likes to do is watch Jerry Springer and play Parcheesi. You think you could help a brother out?”

He wiggled the cards in front of him enticingly and took a seat at the table.

“Sure,” Natasha said coolly, crossing her legs and turning her body so that she was actually facing the table and not the rest of the room. She was simmering with rage. She had never been turned down before. She was half tempted to pounce on him, rip his clothes to shreds with the knife she had tucked away discreetly in her cheap combat boots and ride him so hard he couldn’t walk for days. Let him see what he was missing then.

But she sat there cordially for an hour and a half, teaching Barton a game that not even her own geriatric father thought was all that compelling.

* * *

She hears her father walking up the steps before he entered the apartment. Mostly because he lets her but also because they had the same training.

“Nat,” he calls her. It strikes her all at once how natural the nickname is to him. Not Natashenka or any of the ones he might have called her back in the wasteland of their prison-that-was-kind-of-a-home in Russia. He is American. She does not feel very American. For the first time the divide between them feels like more than just something the Red Room has created for their own convenience. 

“When did he leave me?” She asks her father hollowly. Because even if she is a defunct spy she’s still spry enough to read between the lines.

“Oh honey,” he father said. “He never left you.”

“What?” she says sharply, turning to face him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are better than gouda and crackers, so feed the starving artist, yeah? 
> 
> You can also find me posting kinky art and shit over at [my Tumblr.](http://limerenceandscorn.tumblr.com/)


	3. Dearer Than Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a long one! Special thanks goes out to the Sisterhood of the Dropping Pants for all their encouragement and cheerleading- especially the Finnish bees in fancy jackets that go by the names Roh and Ria. And also to Boh the amazing multitasking Stucky powerhouse. Extra special thanks go out to SuperheroResin for reading this over for me!
> 
> All mistakes are my own.

The little red cup is warm under her hand, even with the cardboard sleeve. The wind rushes down the street in one of those sudden feeble gusts, lifting up the snowflakes which lightly dust every surface and throwing them in the air like so many twirling little ballerinas. Natasha feels it on the back of her neck. Her target-bright red hair is carefully tucked under a slouchy beanie and her sharp green eyes hidden behind oversized sunglasses.

She watches as Clint walks hand-in-hand down the street with a very round woman and a couple of excitable kids. He looks a little befuddled but not unhappy. This matches with her scraps of memory, shreds of a classified document finally piecing together into something that makes sense. Even if sections of it are still redacted. 

“That’s the woman Coulson chose?” Natasha asked, pretending nonchalance for form’s sake if nothing else. Her father sits across from her on the little heated patio, watching as the brunet calls after her children not to run. Laura Barton stops to admire the display in a shop window that glitters with diamonds. If she feels the eyes on her back she shows no signs of it. 

Natasha glances away, just in case. The whole world seems frozen over to her in that moment. Her memories are nothing more than scattered reflections off of the ice, lacking warmth or substance. 

“Yes,” her father says quietly. She’s almost forgotten the question, lost in her own inexcusable melancholy. Operatives get lost all the time. Her partner was taken from her but she’s lucky enough to still see him, to hear the echo of his laughter even if she is no longer the cause. She should be grateful.

She is not. Not even close.

“A cat burglar,” Natasha repeats, again as though somehow the blanketed layers of her judgment will change the facts. She knows that no one will ever feel worthy of the man she loves, but a thief obsessed with wealth and cold stones? It only amplifies Coulson’s crimes that he had chosen a woman so ill-suited to her sunny, smiling archer who never knows what to do with money even when he has it.

Her father shrugs, which she sees from the corner of her eye.

“Well, she’s been known to do work for AIM and she’s helped run some insurance scams and launder money for various corporate and terrorist groups. She’s killed some security guards, put a bunch of them in the hospital a couple times. Which was apparently enough to enroll her in Shield’s ‘rehabilitation’ program,” he says. 

Natasha narrows her eyes, recalling the files her father had showed her back at the apartment. T.A.H.I.T.I Protocol: use memory modification technology and advanced extraterrestrial medical research procedures to heal otherwise fatal injuries. Only ever meant to be used in the event that an Avenger fell in the line of duty.

* * *

“A ‘break glass in case of emergency’ situation,” Coulson said with one of his sardonic little smiles that could mean anything. He did not release his grip on the file. "Noting you need to worry about," he promised in those soothing tones that she had come to trust. It was a conscious effort for her to let go of the file, turn her back to him, and walk away. He was more than just her handler, he was her friend. She trusted him with her life on every mission. Trusting him to keep one secret wasn't exactly easy, but, between friends, it wasn't that much to ask.

* * *

Her father’s gravelly voice brings her back to the present.

“We’ve been keeping a close watch on them both since we figured out what Coulson did. The programming seems to have stuck, at least for now. She believes she’s Laura Barton, homemaker, loving wife of Clint Barton, and mother of two.” Her father sips his hot cocoa thoughtfully, savoring the absurd levels of sweetness the way he always has. He is a product of the depression as much as she is a product of the Red Room.

“Soon to be three,” Natasha mutters, looking longingly at the round, swaddled curve of Laura’s belly. 

“The child isn’t his,” her father said bluntly. People like them did not have any need for platitudes. “It’s barely been two weeks since the procedure. She’s got to be seven or eight months along at least.”

“I wonder,” Natasha said, slowly, measuring out each word as she released it into the frigid air. “Where they got their research into what effects that kind of memory overwrite technology can have on a fetus in utero. On children younger than ten.” The two of them sat there for a minute and tried to swallow that thought together. 

They had never really been a family in the traditional sense, but Natasha knew he took his blood obligation to her seriously. He loved her too, whatever that meant.

Clint twirled one of the children in the snow, an Osh Kosh B’gosh bag swinging from his elbow. She girl held on to his hand and did a sloppy pas de bourre, flinging her free arm out and her head back as no ballet instructor in the world would allow. Laughter rose from the scene with the frozen trail of their breath.

* * *

“First position!” Madame Chateau called, her voice husky with the aftermath of a lifetime of cigarettes and brandy.

As one the row of little curls clinging to the bar turned their toes out, keeping their heels pressed together. Natasha did not know her age, only that the barre was over her head and that she did not want Madame Chateau’s cane to crack against the back of her knees or buttocks. 

She would receive no reprieve from training if she were injured. 

“Tendu into second position!” Madame Chateau called. All the little girls picked up their right legs, sweeping them gracefully out to widen their stance. 

“Fourth!” Madame demanded, challenging them to see if they would remember their tendu and rond de jambe in the transition. 

Natasha remembered, pointing her toes and sweeping her leg out gracefully so that they were crossed with her right in front of her left, toes pointing in opposite directions- balanced and precise. 

A girl behind Natasha evidently did not perform quite so well, given the harsh smack of the cane against soft flesh. The girl got a second caning for letting slip a little whimper. Natasha knew then that the other girl would not survive the program. 

Black Widows were perfect. Immune to weakness, indifferent to pain.

“Every spider must learn to spin its web,” Madame was fond of saying, “Not to admire its beauty but to draw in prey. Think nothing of yourself, think only of perfection. Only through perfection will you survive.”

* * *

Natasha takes a deep breath, letting the cold air wash through her. Clint kisses his daughter on her rosy cheek and sends her scurrying off after her older brother.

“Has it occurred to anyone that this might be for the best?” Natasha asks her father in subdued tones. “Maybe Coulson was right. A life in retirement with a loving family is hardly a curse. It’s everything he’s ever wanted.” She sipped her cappuccino without daring to look over and meet her father’s eyes. 

“Well, actually,” he father starts and already Natasha knows she’s in for a talking to, “Since you’re not a part of that package deal and he’s been fucking in love with you since the moment he saw you, I’m thinking no. That’s not what’s best. He gets to make his own fucking choices Nat and we both know he’d pick you over the factory-made Brady Bunch any day of the week. And since no one fucking asked him if it was okay to make scrambled eggs out of his brain and set him up with an entirely new identity that suited their agency’s fucking political agenda, no I don’t think it’s a fucking good thing this happened. This isn’t what’s best for Clint, or you, or anyone but Coulson and his new wild west Shield. This is a fucking load of rancid horse shit and we’re going to fix it with or without you, Widow.”

Natasha nearly flinched at the name which had taken on a nasty new meaning in the wake of her loss. Her lover- the partner she had vowed to share her life with, if only in her own mind- had been taken from her. She is a widow in more than name now.

“You always know how to cheer a girl up,” Natasha says dryly, taking a drink from her steaming red cup to hide any tells that might slip past her mask of reserve. Her father shrugs again. 

“I wasn’t trying to cheer you up, I was trying to wake you up. I know you trusted these people for a long time. They took you in from the cold. And maybe, with everything that’s happened, that instinct to trust them is still there, the way the instinct to return to the Red Room was when you woke up. 

“The new Shield may not be Hydra but that doesn’t necessarily make them the good guys. Back in my first war, the Allies did some good shit, freeing prisoners at the concentration camps, stopping Hitler, forcing feeding Hydra their own creepy ass tentacles. But you know what else they did? Japanese internment camps, firebombing Dresden, dropping nuclear bombs on Japan, Operation fucking Paperclip.” Bucky has to set his drink on the table and cross his arms to keep his fists tucked against his ribs and not warping the delicate arms of his little chair. 

Operation Paperclip: bring in valuable scientific minds from former Axis countries to the US to work for US intelligence agencies such as Shield on classified projects. In return, they would not be prosecuted for their crimes. On the list of participating doctors- Zola, Arnim.

“Why did they do it?” She asks gently. She doesn’t specify. He knows that she means to give him the opportunity to direct the conversation.

“They brainwashed Barton because he was vulnerable, and he trusted them, and they knew his first loyalty would always be to you and the other people he cared about unless they did something to draw him back into the fold, tighter. They’d convinced themselves they were doing the right thing. They thought they knew better than he did what he needed, what he ‘really’ wanted. 

“So they gave him someone to love that they could control. Someone they had built from the ground up. And they gave him a good life so they could show the rest of us that he wasn’t really gone and pretend that they’d given him a gift. And they want us to fucking smile and nod and say, ‘Thank you, Sir, for saving his life and then taking away all his memories and free will so he would be loyal to you and only you!’ They want us to let them set a precedent so that they can do this again whenever they fucking feel like it.”

“They had to know you and I would never allow it,” Natasha says before suddenly someone is tapping on her shoulder. She whirls around in her seat, her hand dropping her cappuccino and flying to the little Walther PPK she keeps in her coat pocket.

“Awww, coffee! I’m sorry!” the man says, smiling sheepishly. He rubs the back of his neck, ducking his head. “That was totally my fault. Let me buy you a new one?” A quick check reveals that Laura and the kids are bundling into the car and driving off. The little girl, only identifiable by her puffy pink coat thanks to the distance, turns around and starts waving at Clint’s back like he can see them.

“I think that’s my cue to go,” he dad says with a touch of humor. He stands and offers his hand to Barton, who grins and accepts it as if this were normal.

“Oh my god, are you Bucky Barnes?!” Barton asks suddenly, his hand still clamped in Bucky’s. 

“Oh shit, you’re my favorite Avenger, man. Oh my God, I can't believe I was touched by the best sniper in the fucking world! Oh my god,” Clint says, looking down at his now empty hand with child-like wonder. 

“I mean-,” Clint says, suddenly coloring. “Not like- I know you’re with Captain America, I just mean-“ 

“Cool it, pal,” Bucky says, laughing. “I’m getting second-hand anxiety just lookin’ at ya. Take care of my girl, alright?” Clint nods frantically and watches with wide eyes as Bucky tucks his gloved hands into the pockets of his black NorthFace and walks off into the snowfall like a fucking cyborg cowboy hero. 

“I can’t believe you know that guy,” Clint says, his eyes lighting on Natasha again. That sparkle is back in them. A warm appreciation with just a little touch of mischief and, yeah, that’s Natasha’s blend.

“I believe you owe me a drink?” she says coyly, instead of answering him. She wonders idly how excited he’d be to have _her_ touching him if he knew that she’s the Winter Soldier’s daughter.

Clint steps aside so she can stand up and he courteously holds the door open for her. Manners right out of her father’s day- she wonders if he had them before the procedure, if she’ll ever remember those days with any kind of certainty.

There’s no line in the shop. Clint opens his wallet and shuffles past the shiny new credit card to hold out a twenty to the bored teenager behind the counter. “One...” he says, casting a glance at Natasha.  
“Chai cappuccino with extra whip,” she says, ignoring Clint except for how she brushes her arm purposely against his when she shifts her weight.

“Yeah,” Clint says, a little dreamily. “One of those.” The teenager behind the counter rolls her eyes, snags the twenty and gets to work on the drink. Clint and Natasha don’t speak as the girl works but when Clint passes behind her to check out a display of biscotti his hand rests on her back for a second. It feels like she’s been burned right through her coat. 

Clint is the perfect dance partner. She knows every muscle of his body, every move he might make before he does. They are of one language, eagles with talons interlocked soaring together towards the ground in perfect trust. Or, at least, they were once. Will be again if Natasha has anything to say about it. 

Natasha takes her drink when it’s done and slips her arm through Clint’s. “Walk me home?” She asks, tilting her head just so, batting her eyelashes just a little. “It’s getting dark,” she whispers, biting her lip like this fact might worry her. 

“Of course!” Clint says, leading her out of the shop. She lets him guide her through the streets silently. Whether or not he knows that he is the one taking them to the tiny apartment above the coffee shop she can’t say.

“Why did you approach me outside the coffee shop?” She finally asks when they’re about half way there. It’s a loaded question. She’s afraid to break this spell of muscle memory they seem to have fallen under, but if she says nothing and he slips away again…

“I dunno,” Clint says. “I just saw you guys sitting out there in the cold and I thought, aren’t the patios all supposed to be closed this time of year? It felt like… you know I just wanted to make sure you were warm,” Clint finishes lamely. 

“Do I not look warm?” She asks him seductively, twisting so her body is angled to his, her breasts brushing against his bicep. 

“You’d be warmer in my arms,” Clint says, with a totally uncharacteristic burst of smoothness. “With your dress on the floor.” They both stumble to a halt as they remember in tandem, two skydivers with one parachute, leaping from a low flying plane.

* * *

The ballroom was full of crystal and lace and high heeled shoes that cost more than Natasha’s monthly rent. 

Natasha laughed diplomatically, patting the arm of the minor government official who had paid a discreet escort service for the pleasure of her company this evening. He would be paying Shield for the pleasure of her company with the documents in his biometrically encrypted safe, but he didn’t know that yet. 

She just needed to get through the gala and then get him to take her past the security at his mansion downtown. In and out, hardly breaking a sweat. 

These missions were too easy- one of the many reasons she hated them. 

“You look cold,” a voice said from behind her. Natasha looked over her shoulder at Clint- his tux was perfectly tailored to his frankly impressive body. His hair was artfully styled to be just the right side of messy. Clearly, someone in the Shield costuming department had gotten their hands on him.

Honestly, in her slinky little dress, Natasha was cold, but all she cared about was that Clint had just used the passcode to abort the mission and she was within an hour and twenty minutes of completely uneventful mission success. 

“Really?” she asked in one of her most fake voices, “because I’m feeling pretty warm.” Her date- the graying man who had paid for her like a thanksgiving turkey to be trussed up and stuffed- was beginning to get annoyed at this attention. Any moment now Natasha would have no _choice_ but to abort. Pity, because she’d been so looking forward to giving him a grade three concussion and leaving him tied, naked, in his own bathtub for the police to find.

“My arms keep her warm,” the man said in his heavily accented English. 

“You’d be warmer in my arms,” Clint said, completely serious, his eyes locked on hers and only hers. He held out his hands and Natasha let herself shake off the diplomat’s tight grip like it was nothing, and float into the safety of Clint’s embrace. 

He immediately pulled her to the floor, covering her face with his suit jacket as best he could. And that was when all the windows burst in in a shower of glass, the rattle of gunfire and the hiss of smoke grenades making Natasha feel more herself. 

“That dress is going to look amazing on my floor,” Clint whispered in her ear, in the hot dark confines of his jacket. She elbowed him and he laughed, pulling her tighter to his body.

* * *

“Maybe I should go,” Clint says, looking anywhere but at Natasha.

“Walk me home,” she says, because somehow she knows he does well with orders. 

He hesitates, his eyes roaming over her face like there is some answer there he desperately needs. 

“Okay,” he breathes, licking his lips. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” 

They’re moving forward again but it’s her leading him this time and she panics a little with every step because she knows she can’t stop, can’t let him get away, but she has no idea what to do when they reach their destination. 

This should be easy. She isn’t the kind of agent that men say no to. Or, just maybe, she has never been sent after the kind of men who say no. But here is Clint, who she knows is perfectly happy to turn down easy sex, to shove aside his own wants and needs for others. And she has no idea how she ever made him love her or how to pull that magic trick off again.

“Well,” Clint says, apropos of nothing, “this is your place.” Natasha wasn’t paying attention, trusting Clint to guide her. But a quick glance confirms that they are in front of the little apartment filled with dusty memories.

She turns to face him, intending to speak, and finds herself reaching up on her tiptoes to kiss him, just a light press of lips, her fingertips ghosting across the stubble on his cheeks. To her surprise he’s the one that deepens it, that grabs her waist and pulls her against his body, his eyes screwed shut like he’s in pain as he breathes raggedly.

She looks on, balancing herself on his shoulders and wondering if that’s how remembering always feels to him. He’d made the same face when he’d been dragged across a floor full of broken glass in Sydney once. That had been a terrible mission. EMP grenades knocked out his hearing aids and half his trick arrows and her sign language had still been rudimentary- all swearing and tactical phrases. 

“Come up,” she whispers now, just to prove that he can hear her. “Come upstairs. I’ll take such good care of you, Clint. Please,” she begs. She can count on one hand how many times she remembers being so cracked open, and she would still have fingers left to spare. 

“Yeah,” he says, still sounding pained. “Just for a-“ and then he cuts himself off by kissing her like a firestorm, fisting one hand in her hair, so carefully hidden under her beanie, and clutching her hips to his with a hand on the small of her back. 

“Fuck,” he mutters, gasping for breath as she hooks a leg over his hip and grinds into his growing erection, slow and dirty. Right there on the sidewalk, not caring who sees in the least, she all but fucks him through their clothes.

“I want you to take me upstairs,” she whispers against the soft skin of his neck, kissing that delicate little stretch of skin just under his hearing aid. “Unwrap me like a gift and take your fill. I want to taste every inch of you,” she promises. “I want you to forget everything except for how I feel. All you’ll know is how good it feels to be inside me, wrapped up in me. Please,” Natasha begs. 

Only he can crack her open like this. With Clint, when she begs it’s not even the training, it’s a genuine desperation that strains at her titanium control and drives them both into a wild frenzy, fanning the flames until nothing makes sense outside of the delicious burn.

Clint swears under his breath and grabs her ass with both hands, hauling her up so that both her legs are wrapped around his hips. He snags her keys from her pocket, not even seeming bothered about the PPK, and unlocks the door. He carries her all the way up to her apartment and punches in the code to open her door without even breaking a sweat. Natasha rolls her hips against his, naughty and teasing just to hear him groan. 

“Fuck,” he says, kicking the door closed behind him and tossing her on the couch gently. “I’m not even gonna make it to the bedroom.”

“As long as you make it on top of me I don’t care,” Natasha said honestly, tossing off her winter gear, boots and socks while Clint does the same, watching her with the kind of keen-eyed eerie attention that won him his code name. 

She holds eye contact as long as she can while she slowly peels off her shirt, arching her spine so that her breasts are pressed forward toward him. 

Clint makes a sound like a wounded animal and dives toward her, clutching her as he buries his face in her shoulder. 

“I love you,” he mutters, his lips brushing against her skin. “I love you, I love you, I don’t know how but I _know_.” She thinks he’s crying but it isn’t the big ugly heaving sobs that she would expect. It’s something quiet and deeply broken.

“Shh,” she soothes him, caressing her fingers through his tousled hair comfortingly. “You don’t have to think about that now. We’ll deal with that in the morning okay? Just one step at a time.” She rubs his back as his breathing evens out and massages the tension out of his neck and shoulders. 

He’s still a little hard when she reaches around to check. She rubs him tenderly through his jeans. She has to have him. Not just for herself but for them both. If he walks out now he’ll never look at her again. But if he goes through with this… then, she thinks, she can make him stay. At least long enough to fix what’s been done to them.

He moans and stiffens in her hand even as she says, “I’m aching. I’m so alone without you. I’m so wet for you, Clint, thinking about you all around me, the way your hair smells after you’ve just washed it. Everywhere you aren’t touching me I’m freezing. I can’t stand it. Please fill me up again, God, I really need it. You have no idea how much I need you.”

He kissed her then, slow and tender, and reached down to unbutton her jeans and peel them off her legs. 

“I need you too Nat. I’ve missed you so fucking much. I felt like a part of me was gone and I didn’t understand-“

“Hush,” she tells him gently, terrified to hear any more. Sex she can handle as well as an anti-aircraft missile launcher. Emotions, connections, relationships- those all feel like foreign territory to her still.   
He kisses blaze a path up the inside of her legs as his fingers softly caress her curves. The vulnerable line of her Achilles heel, the ticklish backs of her knees, the supple skin of her inner thighs. He makes her feel like a work of art. He is a supplicant at her alter and she was made to be adored. She can barely breathe. She’s in over her head. This isn’t sex.

One thing blends into another, molasses time, warm and syrupy slow. They’re both naked as the day they were born and he’s sliding his lithe body between her knees, settling between the softness of her battle-hardened thighs and pushing into her slowly. She clutches his shoulders, tossing her head back and making some low animal sound in the back of her throat, groaning because she’s never felt so filled or so devoutly loved. 

Her memory teeters pushing her back and forth between the now and all the times before. 

Nowhere is his skin smoother than over his many scars. They decorate him like pale war paint, crossing and crisscrossing each other in a dance of antiquated swordplay.

The way the light catches them as it filters in through her curtains make her think of how she sometimes liked to look at the scars that missions left Clint with and guess how he’d come by them. Even the ones she was there for, sometimes she would replay the moment or imagine it different ways. 

She is constantly trying to decide how best to protect him, even now with his head tucked into the side of her face and her fingertips slipping on the sweat of his lower back as he languidly thrusts into her. She keeps trying to come to peace with the day she will inevitably fail him. When all her devotion and determination won’t be enough to bring him back to this place where he can be safe and warm and loved and understood. 

He fucks into her harder, chanting her name between kisses on her cheek, her chin, her collar bone. She cries out, anguished and pleasured both and urges him on. He chants his ‘I love you’s against her full trembling lips, holding himself up with one hand while the other caresses down her body. He rubs her shoulder, follows the smooth line of her arm until he gets to her tiny waist. He cups her smooth, jiggling breast and rubs a deep blush into her pert nipple. 

She pushes her hips up to meet his thrusts, trying to take control the only way she knows how. She flings her leg around him and he takes the opportunity to clutch at her ass, gripping tight enough to bruise. Her clit rubs against his pelvis just so as he vows, “I’m never leaving you again,” and embarrassingly, that’s all it takes to undo her completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos, comments, and reviews are always encouraged! 
> 
> Seriously I love hearing from you guys so please don't be shy!
> 
> As always you can find me [ at my Tumblr](heartofthemirror.tumblr.com).


	4. Dearer Than Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything comes to an end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to SuperheroResin for her continued enthusiasm and support and to the Sisterhood of the Dropping Pants for being incorrigible enablers. 
> 
> Un-beta'd

She wakes in her own bed, tucked into warm sheets, alone.

She lifts herself up on one arm, clutching the sheets to her chest, suddenly afraid like some maiden in an old-time horror flick. That’s what Clint Barton does to her. That’s how flawed and human he makes her feel.

But he’s still there. Not in bed with her. Not even looking at her. But perched with one hip on the windowsill, scanning the street diligently like he’s on safe house w  
atch duty.

“Clint,” she calls. Her voice is husky. She’s dehydrated. 

First the interminable time in the Alaskan wilderness, then drinking nothing but coffee since arriving in Seattle, then fucking Clint twice over the couch and once in the bed. She desperately needs water but she won’t get it until she knows where his head is at. There are IVs in the med kit under the bed if it comes to that.

“Clint.” 

“I have a wife, you know,” he says. He’s not looking at her, or even out at the street anymore. He’s looking at the gold band he’d twisting around his finger. “Two kids,” he says, and then corrects himself, “three.” 

“Clint,” she says again, as if his memories are some spirit she can conjure by looking deeply in a mirror and repeating his name three times. 

She scooches her body so she’s leaning against the padded headboard, looking at the curled-in curve of his back. “Did you ever wonder how you knew my name?” she asks him. “Or how I knew yours?”

“At the coffee shop,” he says hesitantly, fiddling with a beaded curtain and keeping an eye on all the sightlines from the street. Keeping his back to her. She wants to believe it’s a show of trust but she knows it’s not. “We met at the coffee shop.”

“Yes,” Natasha says, “but not for the first time. You knew me when you saw me from across the street. You never had to ask for my name.” He hangs his head further, digging his fingers into his wild hair and gripping like that might keep the story straight inside his skull. 

“You snuck up on me on purpose. Not many people have that skill,” she says, letting a trace of her admiration creep into her tone.

“You were distracted,” he says dismissively, “talking to your...” 

“My what, Clint?” 

“I don’t know!” he screams suddenly, more afraid than angry, and stands up to start pacing, wearing only a fresh pair of boxers that had been stashed in one of the dresser drawers. The boxers have Angry Birds all over them. They were a Christmas present from her last year. She has to fight not to smile when she sees them, despite the circumstances. 

“This doesn’t make any sense,” he says desperately, pressing his palms to his temples. “My name is Clint Barton. My brother is Barney. We grew up in the circus. I’m an archery hobbyist. I work at a gun range training people to shoot. My dog’s name is Lucky. My wife’s name is Laura. Our kids are Tim and Lisa. We live at 2487 Pensacola Lane. That’s my life. That’s who I am. That makes sense.”

Natasha stands up and walks to him slowly. Despite his outburst she can see the terror in his eyes. She thinks she remembers some shred of that from the first time she had her memory altered against her will. But then again, how is she to know if that was really the first time? All she knows is this,

“Your name is Clint Barton. Your brother’s name is Barney. You grew up in the circus. You’re the greatest archer in the world. You’re an Avenger, one of the founding members. You used to work for Shield before the fall of the Triskelion. Your dog’s name is Lucky. You aren’t married but we’ve been together for almost eight years. You don’t have any kids. You live with me in Stark Tower in Manhattan, or at your shitty apartment building in Bed-Stuy, or in this one here in Seattle, or in any of the dozens of safe houses we have stashed across the world. That’s who you are, Clint Barton.” She pauses but forces the words out though they feel like weakness, like being young again, “The man I love.”

Natasha swallows thickly though there’s nothing in her dry mouth. If he runs now it will be a waiting game. Months of cat and mouse. If he stays… if he stays.

“Natahsa?” he says, confusion and hope and despair all so obvious on his face. It breaks her heart to see him look that way- Clint Barton isn’t meant to live through her trials; but if Natasha knows one thing it’s this: nothing in life is fair.

“Who else, dummy?” she says affectionately. She steps forward to embrace him and he folds into it, burying his tears in the crook of her neck and letting her hold him. She pets and soothes him while she closes her eyes, blocking out everything in the world except for the man in her arms.

“I’ve been where you are,” she whispers in his ear like it’s some kind of secret. “I’ll show you the way out. I’ll lead you home, don’t worry. I’m never going to leave you either, Clint.” And that was all it took for Clint to come crumbling apart completely, the last of his restraint rolling easily away from him with the tears that fell from his cheeks.

* * *

“Coulson.” The man in question freezes but doesn’t let his surprise show on his face. 

“Captain,” he says, turning around to give his guest a pleasant smile. 

“You were a good man when I met you,” Steve says, the shield at the ready on his arm but lowered casually by his side like it isn’t one of the deadliest weapons on Earth in the right hands. Coulson has the distinct impression he is being eulogized. 

“You were honest,” Steve says, “straightforward. It was refreshing, you know. After only having shield agents for company for so long you were like a breath of fresh air. More soldier than spy, just like me.”

“Well,” Coulson allows, looking away from his hero, “More mid-level bureaucrat, maybe.” Steve smiles a little at that, lifting one eyebrow and nodding his head to the side.

“You were a good guy who believed in simple truths in a complicated world,” Steve says. Coulson actually feels the compliment of those words strangling him, a rope around his neck he’d gladly hang from.

“Coming back,” Steve says, dragging out the words instead of glossing them over like the others do. “The TAHITI Program, it’s changed you. You’re not that straightforward guy anymore. The things you’ve done, Phil… How can you say you’re any better than Hydra now?”

It’s only the slightest shift in his expression, but Steve can tell he’s wounded the would-be Director of Shield. 

“Maybe it isn’t me that’s changed,” Coulson suggests calmly. “You were never meant to be a spy. Fury tried to tell me that, back before The Incident, but I was too young then to understand what he meant. You still aren’t ready to fight wars where the bad guys didn’t paint themselves with big red targets. 

“I understand why you did what you did and hell, maybe I would have done the same thing in your place. But destroying Shield left the world vulnerable in more ways than you know. Someone had to step in and fill that void, make the hard calls.” 

“Like brainwashing my step-son?” Steve asks with that deceptively mild tone that always precedes a violent explosion. 

“Clint Barton is not your step-son,” Phil says with a condescending calm, as though speaking to a child having a tantrum. “I was his friend for _years_ before you ever knew him. I was his handler in the field. 

“You know what he used to talk about on the long days? Retirement. A beautiful wife who shared his interests. Laura knows him better than anyone. Loves his favorite book, his favorite cereal. And the children and their college funds, we provided all that.”

“You set up a sick fantasy and tricked him into playing your dancing monkey. You can’t brainwash someone into love, Coulson. If you can’t understand that, are you even human anymore?”

Coulson staggers a step back, supporting himself on his desk and looking as close to tears as Steve has ever seen him. 

“You tricked him into bed with a woman whose name he never knew. You erased all memory of the woman he loved, the woman he spent years building a life with,” and Steve couldn’t help it, he was getting choked up now too.

He doesn’t see the ICER coming but by the grace of Dr.Erskine his reflexes are faster than any human, no matter how well trained. The force of the shield knocking the ICER out of Coulson’s hand fractures   
the director’s wrist, though not enough to stop him, only slow him down.

The fight doesn’t last long after that.

“I’m bringing you in, Coulson,” Steve says and Coulson has never imagined that Captain America’s Disappointed Face might ever be leveled at him. 

“Really?” Coulson asks, playing his last card. “Bringing me in where? Who are you going to trust with all the secrets I have locked inside my head? Hydra could be anywhere and I’m the only thing that-“

“No,” Steve says firmly, “you’re not. And our mutual friend is going to help remind you of that fact.”

“Mutual friend?” Coulson asks, actually worried for the first time in the encounter. Steve just smiles his Brooklyn boy smile and slips a pair of Stark Expanding Mag-Cuffs from a pouch on his belt.

* * *

Steve grumbles and turns over as he feels Bucky sliding into bed behind him. 

“Your hands are cold,” Steve gripes, freeing up a little more of the comforter for his lover regardless. Bucky just grunts and the manly scent of him, all musk and clean sweat drifts over Steve like the warmth of their blankets.

“Are the kids okay?” Steve asks with the last reserves of his consciousness. 

“They will be,” Bucky reassures him, pressing a kiss to the back of Steve’s neck because it’s too much effort to reach anywhere else. “They’re tough and they’ve been through worse.”   
Steve wisely didn’t argue because he was comfortable with Bucky’s knees tucked behind him and Bucky’s arm secure around his waist. But he could have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments very much welcome! 
> 
> I'm toying with the idea of doing a sequel/prequel but I'm not sure yet so let me know if that's something you'd be interested in.
> 
> You can also find me at [my tumblr.](http://heartofthemirror.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> "To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter."  
> -Euripides
> 
> I really hope you liked it. Kudos and comments are my bread, butter, and petit aperitifs so please feed the starving writer guys! :D  
> Please?
> 
> You can also find my at [ my tumblr](http://limerenceandscorn.tumblr.com/) where I sometimes draw naked butts and post previews of things I'm working on.


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